A triumph of justice

Last December, London's Tricycle Theatre successfully staged Reginald Rose's classic drama with 12 lawyers as the angry men, and now Guy Masterson has pulled together 12 comedians to get their laughing gear around the animated jury-room debate.

Fifty years after it was written, this script is still so tight that it seems a richly infallible proposition - and the standing ovation from an audience that had hung limpet-like onto every detail in the case proved that the Herculean effort of co-ordinating all the comedians had been worth it.

If one were to gripe, it would be to make the point that it does not bode particularly well for the health of theatre on this year's fringe when one of the best productions is based on a drama that was written during the 1950s. Even so, the problems that Masterson and the comedian Owen O'Neill experienced not so much in casting comedians as keeping them (for instance Rich Hall was offered a million-dollar movie, Greg Proops got a radio show that clashed with the show's time) makes it hard to begrudge the fact that this is going to be an obvious box office success.

Some of the comedians are virtually unrecognisable in their adopted personae - but David Calvitto is a gloriously cynical Juror Seven, while Stephen Frost's bullish, bellowing double-act with Ian Coppinger's indignant mouse of a Juror Two raises several laughs. As Juror Eight, famously played by Henry Fonda in the immortal film, O'Neill manages to project the unassuming gravitas that eventually turns the verdict round.

In a political climate where proper examination of evidence might yet sustain or topple our Government, this is a fascinating reminder of democracy's founding principles. It proves that ultimately it is difficult to beat a good, intelligent script with characters so believable you could imagine having a drink with them.